


Unraveled

by Danao



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Danao/pseuds/Danao
Summary: Obi-Wan receives an unasked for second chance when he accidentally travels back in time, decades before the rise of the Empire. But with the advantage of foresight comes the heavy burden of memory; and Darkness, though hidden, runs deep within the heart of the Republic he had once sworn to protect.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 26
Kudos: 131





	1. Chapter 1

“…convulsing has stopped, so we can…”

“…better than… youngest yet…”

“…coming to… Initiate, Initiate… nobi, Initiate Kenobi...?”

_What?_

“He’s waking up.”

There were hands touching him. Why were there hands _touching_ him?

“He’s distressed – Initiate, can you hear me? It’s safe, you’re at the Temple. You’re in the Halls of Healing – “

Impossible. Impossible impossible impossible. _Anakin._ Where was Anakin?

“Put him under, he’s seizing again – “

No! He had to go, he had to find Anakin, this was all _wrong_ –

A foreign presence. _Sleep._

He was too weak to fight it off. He slept.

_In the Force, Anakin bloomed like a supernova._

_Only Obi-Wan lingered close to the final battle between the Jedi and the Sith. Qui-Gon had seemed to want to accompany him, but Yoda swept him away. There were other presences in this in-between space too, older and bigger but also half-faded, as if eroded by time – but they only watched from a distance, silent. Obi-Wan was alone, the barest and most vulnerable he had ever been, and waited._

_He hoped with everything he had, every shred of love and heartbreak and anguish, that should Anakin die, he would be able to help him._

_Now Anakin was dying, and the Force was weeping, and so was Luke – brave, kind Luke – and Anakin was blooming like a supernova. Obi-Wan reached out, heedless of the danger, knowing full well that Anakin could destroy him completely in that moment –_

_He was on Mustafar, and Anakin was burning before his eyes._

_“Obi-Wan.” Tired blue eyes peered up at him. “Of course it’s you.”_

_He scrambled down the ashy shore, unable to speak._

_“Have you come to end this the way it should have long ago?” Anakin continued. Vader’s studied blankness, but Anakin’s voice, even as his skin curdled and he writhed in place. He was burning, Obi-Wan could tell he could feel it, all of it, but he was not screaming. Somehow, that made it worse._

_“No,” Obi-Wan managed to rasp, landing in an undignified sprawl before Anakin’s prone body. “No, Anakin, I’m so sorry.”_

_Anakin’s remaining hand clutched at his thigh. Obi-Wan hugged him close, and started hoisting him up, so that Anakin would lie over Obi-Wan. Slowly, painstakingly, Obi-Wan crawled backwards away from the lava._

_Anakin was silent, but he did not let go._

“Are you back with us, Initiate?”

Obi-Wan stared blankly at the impossible sight of a Temple healer standing over him. The healer frowned at this, and moved away to check the monitors beeping slowly over his head.

“The anti-convulsants should have been weaned off by now…” the healer muttered to themself, before re-appearing in Obi-Wan’s line of sight. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on your progress.”

Obi-Wan just blinked at them. The healer left quickly, parting the privacy curtain to pass through. As they did so, Obi-Wan was able to get a brief glimpse of the rest of the room. It was more of a hall, really, with rows and rows of what he recognized as make-shift medcots. Most of the privacy curtains had been parted, and Jedi of various ages and species lied or sat in their beds within. It would have been an alarming sight if they hadn’t also been conversing casually to each other or to the healers that were checking on them.

He sat up slowly. He could still hear the mild chatter and miscellaneous sounds of constant activity; and the Force, when he tentatively reached out to it, was a lazy winding current.

Another healer bustled in, probably sensing his increased awareness.

“Oh good!” she exclaimed good-naturedly. “We were getting a bit worried, you were taking longer to wake up than the others. How are you feeling?”

He took stock of his body. It felt strange to have one, after some time without, and it had been many years since he had not felt the toll aging had taken on him. “I’m… fine.”

“No headaches? Muscle pain?”

He shook his head at each question. “What happened?”

“There was a… fluctuation in the Force that gave many of the Jedi in the Temple vague visions, all at the same time,” the healer responded, with an expression on her face that suggested she wasn’t exactly sure of her own answer. “It seemed pretty harmless, but quite a few passed out, including you, Initiate Kenobi. What do you remember?”

Too much. Not enough. “Just flashes. Voices. But nothing that really makes sense.”

The healer nodded. “That isn’t unusual. There are others like you that have said the same. If nothing changes, if it doesn’t happen again, it’s likely we’ll clear all of you by the end of the day.” She sat at side of his cot and looked at him directly. “I know it’s all terribly confusing, so if you want, you can discuss what you’ve seen with your Docent or we can schedule you with a mind healer. They will not judge you for whatever it is you want to share with them.”

Obi-Wan subconsciously clasped his hands over his lap. “I’ll keep that in mind, Healer. Thank you.”

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t insist further. “Healer Jek will see to you in a while. If they say you’re good to go, you should take a walk around the hall just to ensure your balance is completely recovered. It’s a bit harder to tell, with Humans.” She stood and gave him a light pat over his head. “Until then, take it easy and call out if you need anything.”

He was left alone again, but the privacy curtains did nothing to muffle the hum of activity just beyond, nor the unmistakeable presence – thousands, _actual thousands_ – of Jedi, living, _existing_ , within the oasis of Light that was the Temple.

He breathed in and let it out very carefully.

_Time, or perhaps his perception of it, did not work even remotely the same way within the Force as it had in life._

_He had lost time before. It had slipped from him in a haze of exhaustion, grief, even drugs and various injuries. With it came a sense of dislocation, moments melding together in an abrupt disjointedness, like somebody skipping forward on a holorecording._

_This was the opposite. It was too much of everything, all at once, a barrage of sensation and awareness that would never end. He did not know how he managed to separate himself from the current. Perhaps it was Luke’s voice, crying out his name in distress. Perhaps it was Qui-Gon’s gentle mooring. Perhaps it was Vader – Anakin, his_ Anakin _, he could not run away from that name now – and the well of loneliness within his twisted soul rising in the Force like the wailing cry of a black hole. Perhaps it was all of these._

_But even when he had finally settled, finally remembered enough of himself to unpick from the greater tide of the Force, he had never again felt that same clarity of being that used to be so effortless until Anakin once more stood by his side. He was a beacon under which everything came into focus. With him, the very landscape of the Force changed, becoming tangible, a collection of thought and memory given form. Anakin’s early childhood as a slave on Tatooine merged with Obi-Wan’s years of watchfulness and exile, like bookends, a completed circuit of a life lived in tandem._

_“It hadn’t been like this before,” Obi-Wan observed. He turned to Anakin. “It’s easier with you around.”_

_Anakin looked at him and smiled._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks for reading! This is likely going to be a long project, and I'm kind of just tentatively dipping my toe into it. Outline's already pretty solid, but it will take a while for me to figure out the stuff strung in between so chapters will still take some time. 
> 
> Fair warning, this is a mish-mash of legends and canon, with a healthy dose of personal headcanons and tropes I picked up from years of reading fanfic. I'll try to include sources and explain blatant canon divergence when I can, but I can't promise 100% accuracy.


	2. Chapter 2

Morning light crept through the windows as Obi-Wan wound his way through the labyrinthine hallways of the Temple, avoiding the nearly non-existent internal security with ease. All he had to do was side-step most of the droids, and keep his presence unobtrusive to the preoccupied Knights and Masters. It was simple. Too simple. Heartbreakingly so.

To think, there had once been a time when he wholly believed in the Temple’s sanctity. How complacent they all had been, how utterly unprepared, how _vulnerable_ here where they were meant to be the safest.

He kept walking. The Guard was trickier to get past, but he had succeeded in far riskier escapes. None of them stirred as Obi-Wan slipped through. He kept walking, and kept walking, and kept walking…

Coruscant was an explosion of flashing lights and noise. Anakin had been so overwhelmed by it those first few months that he would bury himself underneath a blanket after trips outside the Temple, breathing in sharp staccato beats until Obi-Wan laid a calming hand on his heaving back. But the next day he would pester Obi-Wan to take them both outside again, a determined set to his mouth and the tense line of his small shoulders; and he would plunge himself into the din, over and over, until it no longer hurt him.

It wasn’t the neon or the clamor of a fast-moving crowd. Even back then, Obi-Wan had understood that much.

It was – like watching the suns rise and realizing anew the depth of what he had lost. Like looking at the face of a baby and mourning a brave boy he once knew. Like waking in a dream without half of his soul.

_I’m not nearly as brave as you are,_ Obi-Wan told the memory of his Padawan, cheeky smiles and bright laughter. _If only I am._

He went deep into the lower levels, deep enough that the pale blue sky was nothing but mere patches of light rarely glimpsed through ventilation shafts and corroded metal. He went deeper, and deeper still, treading carefully down long-unused lifts and stairs and crumbling ladders. He needed to remain undisturbed for as long as possible, for what he was about to do, and in the undercity even Jedi would be hard-pressed to find him.

“You feel troubled, Grandmaster.”

The old Jedi’s ears perked up. “Qui-Gon. Rested well, you have?”

Qui-Gon gathered his robes and sat cross-legged beside Yoda, overlooking the long stretch of a bubbly stream. “Yes, Master, I have,” he answered, and waited. It was quiet in their secluded corner, save for the faint sound of water and the subtle hum of an idling hoverchair. There was nobody else nearby.

Their typical positions were reversed, Qui-Gon realized. Usually, it was Master Yoda who made pointed remarks on his well-being while he struggled internally under the patient silence that followed.

Eventually, Yoda stirred. “Gone missing, a youngling has. Worried, his Docent is, that injured he was or trapped within the older chambers.”

“When was this youngling reported missing?” Qui-Gon asked, frowning. It wasn’t unexpected for young ones to wander off where they weren’t allowed and get into accidents. And in a Temple as old as theirs, there were plenty of nooks and crannies an adventurous child could get lost in. He himself had once had an unfortunately thorough introduction to an abandoned elevator shaft, trying to prove a point to Tahl – but the Grand Master’s usual airy presence wouldn’t be hunkered so if this was nothing but the typical chaos younglings got up to.

“Absent from his cot this morning, he was. Looked for him all over the creche and the Initiate’s Halls, Docent Vant did, but disappeared he has, even from security holos.” Yoda’s hand curled over his gimer stick. “A search, there is. Knights and Masters, we have sent.”

Qui-Gon’s frown deepened. “It is late afternoon,” he said mostly to himself, gazing up at the massive skylights dotting the aged stone ceiling.

“Too long, it has been,” Yoda agreed quietly.

“There is more to this.” Qui-Gon sensed that there was something Master Yoda wasn’t saying.

“So sure you are, hrm?” a spark of mischief returned to Yoda’s voice, but it was quick to disappear, replaced again with somberness as he continued, “Yes, more, there is. Told you the child’s name, have I? Recognize it you will. _Obi-Wan Kenobi_.”

Qui-Gon searched his memory. He remembered – at the Halls of Healing, yesterday, gasping and trembling at the half-remembered vestiges of blaster fire and so much death. A bewildering explanation, pieced together as his fellow Jedi started to wake, of the bizarre visions that assailed almost everyone within the Temple. And the Human boy, the youngest there, who screamed and convulsed so violently as he woke in fits and starts that Qui-Gon feared the visions would never let go of him.

His name was Obi-Wan. An Initiate, untrained, at the cusp of his 13th year.

“You think the youngling’s disappearance is related to what we all saw?” Qui-Gon asked, even if he already knew the answer. A feeling of vague foreboding was rising within him, a feeling so familiar it felt like an old friend. The shape of something unnameable looming far ahead, at the end of every road and path he might yet take.

“Afraid, perhaps Obi-Wan is. Seeking to hide, he may be. Or simply seeking.” Master Yoda met his gaze. “Look for him in turn, you will?”

Qui-Gon sighed, and rose. “I am certain another helping hand won’t be amiss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do we feel about illustrations? :]


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